9th Australian Symposium on Antennas, Sydney, Australia, 16-17 Feb.

2005

DEVELOPMENT OF RECTENNA FOR MICROWAVE POWER RECEPTION

N. C. Karmakar1, P.K. Weng2 and S. M. Roy1

1
Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC
3800, 2 School of EEE, NTU, Singapore 639798, Email: nemai.karmakar@eng.monash.edu.au;

In the quest of green energy, scientists have been in the pursuit of converting deep space solar
energy into high power microwave energy. This microwave energy is transmitted to the earth by a
high gain parabolic reflector and received and converted to DC power with rectenna [1]. Scientists
believe that within the next few decades this method will solve world’s energy crisis significantly
and become an alternative energy source for developing countries those cannot effort conventional
energy sources.

Rectenna is defined as rectifying antenna. A rectenna is capable of receiving microwave energy

from space and converting the received microwave power back to usable low frequency or DC
power. A basic rcectenna consists of an antenna, a diode rectifier and a dc bypass filter. This work
presents a rectenna designed at 2.4 GHz unlicensed band. The development starts with the design
of microstrip patch antenna, followed by the design of a diode rectifier and a lowpass filter (LPF).
The final output of the rectenna is dc power. Figure 1(a) shows the complete schematic diagram of
a generic rectanna. Once the microwave power is received by the individual antenna, it passes
through the high frequency rectifying diodes. A HSMS 8202 Schottky diode is used to convert high
frequency power to DC voltage. The diode has a conversion gain of 0.45. After the successful
design of ACMPA, the antenna is integrated with the rectifier diode followed by a lumped element
LPF. The final output is a DC voltage collected by a DC Voltmeter.

The high transmitted microwave power is captured by a large array antenna. The antenna
element of the array is an aperture coupled microstrip patch antenna (ACMPA). The ACMPA is the
most suitable candidate due to its low profile, light weight, better power handling capability in an
array, each of integration with active devices, isolation between feedlines and antenna radiators.
Both patch and feedline are designed on RT/duroid 5880 with 0.656 mm thickness and dielectric
constant of 2.2. Figure 1b shows the photograph of the top of the rectenna and Figure 1c shows the
bottom of the rectenna (feedline, the rectifying diode and the lumped element LPF). The ACMPA
produces 5% bandwidth at 2.4 GHz, 60° 3-dB beamwidth and 6 dBi gain at 2.4 GHz.

HSMS 8202
+

Antenna
Load
LPF

Figure 1 (a) Schematic of rectenna. Figure 1 (b) Top view of Figure 1 (c) Bottom view of
rectenna. rectenna.

The rectenna is illuminated with a transmitting horn antenna with 10 dBm microwave power at 2.4
GHz at a far field distance of 2 metres and rectified dc voltage of 0.3V is detected in a voltmeter.

Reference: [1] IEEE Microwave Magazine, Vol. 3, no. 4, December 2002.